Why Do We Celebrate Halloween? Halloween is an interesting and sometimes controversial day. It has its foundation in a variety of ancient celebrations, including those of the Celts and the Christian religion. However, in recent years it has become solely a non-religious celebration. Its status as a secular day is still debated, since Halloween carries some of the oldest traditions and symbols into the 21st century. Of course, most people are familiar with Halloween’s traditional colors – black and orange. Modern-day activities include displaying the jack-o’-lantern made from a pumpkin, going from house to house for “trick-or-treat” and dressing up in various costumes (many depicting ghosts, witches and goblins). The day is also associated with scary stories, haunting and so on. How did Halloween come to be a day of celebration with such specific and often frightening symbols? Some popular oral histories and art show a Halloween celebration in Ireland in the early 1830s. This may well be the beginning of our modern celebrations. The Irish immigrants of the 1840s who left home to escape the famine brought much of the day’s activities and traditions with them. The time of year is important as well, since Halloween has roots in the Celtic harvest festival in the autumn. This festival often involved large bonfires and the slaughtering of cattle to prepare for winter. Costumes were sometimes used to imitate or ward off certain spirits believed to be evil. The name “Halloween” comes from a three-word phrase – All Hallows Eve. The last word is a shortened form of the word “evening.” This day and night were traditional a celebration of all saints, which originally was celebrated in the spring. According to some history books and encyclopedia entries, the Celts of ancient times introduced the skeleton as a Halloween symbol centuries ago. This population sometimes placed skeletons in the windows of their homes as a representation of the dear departed. The jack-o’-lantern may have come from the practice of carving different vegetables and fruits to make likenesses for the same purpose. Some believe that these carved items were used to scare away evil spirits. Others have proposed that the candle or light inside a pumpkin came from the legend of a man who wandered in the night with a small candle inside a carved turnip! Pumpkins are now used at Halloween because they were plentiful in the U.S. and provided a larger space to place the candle in. This practice probably began after the Irish immigrants arrived in the mid-1800s. The symbols and activities of Halloween vary quite a bit, but it seems that the traditional Halloween celebration is a mixture of many different cultures and ideas. Anything that is dark and mysterious in a culture has the chance to become part of the Halloween tradition. In modern times, horror films have become closely associated with this unique day/night. Yet many homes still combine these scary symbols with the more positive idea of harvest and celebration, using fresh pumpkins, corn husks and other harvest-related items.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 17:38:02 +0000
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